Epstein Becker to close Atlanta office

Epstein Becker & Green will close its Atlanta office by the end of the year as a cost-cutting measure, Thomson Reuters reports.

The office opened in 2000 with the aim of landing the firm more real estate work in the Atlanta area, but Epstein Becker’s chairman, Mark Lutes, said on Tuesday that those plans fell largely by the wayside after the head of the firm’s real estate practice group left for DLA Piper in 2011.

Instead, Lutes told Thomson Reuters, the firm was losing a “substantial” amount of money in overhead costs for the Atlanta office. "I think our lawyers there worked hard to try to erase that, but they weren't making much progress in doing so," he said.

Some of the office’s 14 lawyers may continue working for the firm in either a different firm office or a smaller satellite location in Atlanta.

This isn’t the first office that Epstein Becker has shuttered in recent years—its Miami and Dallas locations closed in 2010 and 2008, respectively. The firm did open an additional two-person office in Indianapolis last year, however.